To a graphics designer, inspiration can come from a number of sources. Sketches, for instance, provide to be a good starting point for some designers. For others, images or natural occurrences of nature frequently provide inspiration. Such inspiration for designs can be encountered and captured in an image anytime and anywhere. To this end, an important workflow in the creative process is directed to the generation of salient contours based on a captured image. More particularly, salient contours representing or bounding a shape or form of an item in a captured image can be generated and, thereafter, used by a graphic designer as a starting point for creating a design.
Traditionally, the generation of salient contours has been an offline process, whereby a designer takes captured images to a studio and relies on graphics design tools, such as Adobe® Photoshop® or Adobe® Illustrator®, to generate salient contours from the captured images. Even with the prevalence of mobile device technologies (e.g., smartphone cameras) enabling graphic designers to capture inspiration at sometimes unexpected occasions, such an offline process limits the output salient contours based on the previously captured image. For example, various factors associated with the captured image, such as lighting, camera angle, background contrast, and/or object motion, can greatly affect the outcome of the salient contours derived therefrom as the traditional offline approach of salient contour generation does not provide for after-the-fact adjustments of the captured image. As such, in the event the designer is not satisfied with the salient contours generated from the captured image, the designer would need recreate the previous occasion/location at which the image was captured, if even possible, in an effort to recreate salient contours.